Chinese Sources

In need of a scapegoat over massive protests by the Han Chinese community in Urumqi, Xinjiang province, against a string of bizarre syringe attacks supposedly orchestrated by Uyghur separatists, the government at the weekend sacked Li Zhi, Urumqi's Communist Party chief.

Born and raised in Xinjiang, Huang Zhangjin (黄章晋) has worked as a journalist for several media organizations and is also a longtime blogger. Huang was also an editor of online forum, Uighur Online. The following post “Please Tell Them, Yahximusiz” was published on his Sohu blog on December 31, 2005, but has also recently been recirculated in the Chinese blogsphere following the violence in Urumqi on July 5.

The deadly ethnic riot on Sunday in Urumqi, capital of China’s Xinjiang province, is a wake-up call for Beijing. The violent incident, in which 156 were killed and more than 800 wounded, should prompt the Chinese government to change its policies and address the ethnic tensions in China’s restive border regions, particularly Xinjiang and Tibet.

Before the G20 summit, China made a series of high-profile moves, notably comments by People's Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan about replacing the US dollar with special drawing rights or a global reserve currency.